16 November 2014

“Huns et Xiongnu,” — Étienne de la Vaissière, CAJ, 2005

Here is an attempt to translate into English de la Vaissière’s very important 2005 paper, which establishes the equivalence of Huns and Xiongnu once and for all:

“Huns et Xiongnu,”
CAJ, 2005

Étienne
de la Vaissière (EPHE, Paris)

I. Huns, Xwn and Xiongnu

1. Maenchen-Helfen and the
birth of a scientific field

It has
been a quarter of a millennium since de Guignes proposed to identify Xiongnu
with the Huns in his General History of
the Huns, Turks, Mongol Tatars and other Western Tatars (1756–8). A considerable
historiography had been built on this assumption since then until
Maenchen-Helfen, in a series of articles fifty years ago, took it down
completely and firmly stated the lack of link between Xiongnu and Huns,
temporarily putting an end to the debate. Maenchen-Helfen’s articles are at the
root of almost all of the current historiography. Served by his unrivalled
knowledge of Soviet archaeology, Maenchen-Helfen succeeded in making the
history of European Huns an autonomous domain. All his articles tended to
conclude like so: separate the Hunnic question from the age-old question of
Asiatic origins to study the history of Huns for itself. Perhaps, it was
necessary: a scientific field is usually constructed by ruining the previous
field, and it is certain that, in all respects, issues put forth by
Maenchen-Helfen were a progress. However, to do this, he probably went too far.
It seems possible today, with new Central Asian sources, not only to strengthen
the political intuition of de Guignes—i.e., the Huns are well proclaimed heirs
of the old empire Xiongnu—but to show that the Huns were part of the Xiongnu as
well.

In his
first article in 1945, Maenchen-Helfen continued Shiratori’s analysis, which
had been little known to specialists in the Hunnic question, and showed that
the main text, which was based on Chinese historiography to demonstrate the
identity of the Xiongnu with Huns (Wei
shu 102.2270), was interpolated from a gloss that totally distorted the
meaning: the country of Su-tê, formerly
called Yancai, subjugated by King Hu-ni of Xiongnu, was not the Crimean
Sogdiana of Alans submitted by the Huns, as Hirth had previously thought, but
Central Asian Sogdiana, deceptively close to the ancient name of the Alans in
Chinese texts, Yancai. Thus, the reconciliation of Hun with Xiongnu saw itself
deprived of any textual basis.1

However,
in 1948, the Iranist W. Henning published a new reading of a text dated 313, a
letter—the second of the Sogdian
Ancient Letters—sent
from the Gansu corridor to Samarkand by a Sogdian merchant named Nanaivandak.
Henning showed that it was, without a doubt, possible that the plunderers Xwn of northern China described by this
text, a name indistinguishable from the Huns of Western sources, were, in fact,
the Xiongnu who put an end to the Jin Dynasty. This new document, which called
the Xiongnu Xwn, took exactly the
opposite view to Maenchen-Helfen’s thesis.2

This
text is central to the issue at hand and it must be clarified that there is
indeed no doubt that the Huns in Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries
actually called themselves by this name. Not only all Western accounts agree in
this sense, but this name is found unchanged in all populations affected by the
extremely rapid Hunnic expansion, whether in the West, in the Balkans or in South
Caucasus, a proof that it was Huns themselves who spread it. But, this is
precisely the word used by the Sogdian merchant. Therefore, there are two possibilities:

—
either Nanaivandakuses this wordto describeproperlythe Xiongnu, that is to sayXwnisthe transcript ofthe actual name ofthis people,whichisXiongnu in the
Chinese transcription, andwe
must admit thatthe Hunshave
very well retained the name of theXiongnu,in circumstancesthat remains to
be explained, or

—
ourmerchantusesa word
fromanothersourceto be specified,in which casenolinkwithXiongnucan be established, and the only thing remaining isto explainwhythe Hunsin Europe
and aSogdianmerchant would
use thesame word.

It
is true that Maenchen-Helfen warned repeatedly against such a reasoning: either
one should reason based on names only, or only ethnographic and archaeological
facts should be considered. But, presented so radically, this thesis is
unacceptable. To quote the counter-examples he mentions many times, there is
obviously a political link between Western and Eastern Romans, and,
Charlemagne, like Diocletion and Joseph II, be that as it may, is a Roman
emperor. The
political dimensionof a namecan, by no means,be ignored;otherwise, much ofthehistory of political ideas mustbe considered negligible. Byzantine Greeks proclaim themselves
the heirs of the Romans, and are entitled to be so in terms of political
history, and the Huns are equally able to proclaim themselves heirs of the
Xiongnu. The steppe also has the right to have ideas, a political history,
everything that conveys a proper name, and it is not clear why this would be
irrelevant.

Aware
of themajor problem withthis Sogdian testimony,Maenchen-Helfen published,in 1955,an initial response:he attempted toconfrontthe evidence of theSecond
Ancient Letter with the
oldest Greco-Latintexts, which alsomentionedthe
Hunsorsimilar names, but
unrelated tothe realHuns, to emphasize the purelynominal character of the testimoniumsogdicum.3Juxtaposing scholarlyanalysesoneach of these items, Maenchen-Helfen’sreasoningdoes not stand up to the challenge: a first-hand evidence that calls the Xiongnu
Huns, and comparison with purely literary references where reading Hun is not the
result of an accident, is not likely to weaken. Only an internal explanation,
giving an account of the use of the word Xwn
by a Sogdian merchant in Gansu in the beginning of the fourth century, could
lead to reject the link between Xiongnu and Huns.

This
explanation was provided by H. Bailey. In 1954, in an article devoted to Harahuna of Indian sources, he set forth
the hypothesis that the Sogdian Xwn could
have been taken from the name of a hostile people cited in the Avesta, the Hyaona-: “Had the old name of the Hyaona survived among the Sogdians, which they then used for the Hsiung-nu? Or was this Sogdian Xwn taken directly from the name of the Hsiung-nu?”4In 1959, Maenchen-Helfen resumed his account of this idea, while
continuing to emphasize that the key was elsewhere, and lay not in the identity
of names but in ethnological parallels.

Bailey’s
proposal cannot be reduced to Maenchen-Helfen’s idea. But, the latter is what
really interests us. Indeed, the purpose of Bailey was primarily to prove, at
least partially, the Iranian character of the Xiongnu—which would have derived
their name directly from the Hyaona—that was followed up by no one.

Maenchen-Helfen
was no longer interested then in the Ancient
Sogdian letters, which are not even mentioned in his World of the Huns, published posthumously in 1973. Pursuing his
reasoning to its logical conclusion and having clearly stressed enough that
what mattered was the material reality, he goes so far as to acknowledge the
possibility of a vague phonetic link between the names of Xiongnu and Huns.

2. The Xwn of the Second
Ancient Letter in recent historiography

The
debate goes on, usually based on the ideas of Maenchen-Helfen, and the Second Ancient Letter continues to pose
a problem in this context. So, when Sinor wants to rebut Henning’s reasoning,
he writes: «The flaw in this argument is its disregard of the fact that the
name Hun has been used consistently as a generic for many barbarian or
barbarous peoples—for instance, in Byzantine sources in which Hungarians or
Ottomans are often called Huns.»5 This presentation of the facts,
which is a part of the reasoning of Maenchen-Helfen in 1955, is based on a
strange conception of history: using examples after the Great Migration, Sinor
does not run a great risk of being denied, because it is actually quite clear
that the word Hun has already become generic. The whole problem is to clarify
when. To be convincing, Sinor should have invoked the generic uses of the term
Hun prior to the fourth century.

Daffinà
also dealt with the text of the Second
Ancient Letter, and placed it in the alternative explanation suggested by
Bailey: Xwn is either the Sogdian
form of Hyaona used generically to
refer to the nomads, or it is a transcription of the name of the Xiongnu. To
refute the second possibility, he evokes the differences between the actual
pronunciation of the Chinese bisyllabic form “Xiongnu” and the way the Sogdian
merchant heard it, i.e., Xwn. Xwn would merely be a distorted form of Xiongnu by an intermediate dialect, and
hence a match with the name of the Huns in the West would be due to
phonological happenstance alone.6However, Xwn is by no means, in this
case, a transcript of a Chinese form, local or not, but the name by which the
Xiongnu called themselves. The Sogdians had direct contacts with the Xiongnu,
completely independent of the Chinese, and transcribed the original name.7 That the Chinese form (Xiongnu =
howling slaves) is of complex and uncertain shape, burdened as much by the
phonology as by the games the Chinese played with its meaning in transcribing
it, is certain; however, this does not take away any value from the completely
independent Xwn transcription, even
if it is one.

On the
other hand, Daffinà further points out that the first possibility—that Xwn is a derivative of Hyaona—rests
entirely on its only mention in the Second
Ancient Letter, which limits its value. Sinor refuses Bailey’s reasoning,
too.8

Yet,
Bailey’s idea is the only one to save the currently dominant thesis in
historiography—the absence of links between Xiongnu and Huns—and the evidence
of the Second Ancient Letter. If we,
thus, put aside the idea of pure chance, Daffinà’s position of which he himself
recognizes its paradoxical nature, then only Bailey explains in a consistent
manner why Nanaivandak could be misleading, because, if Nanaivandak did not
misguide us, then the Huns of Europe had been using the name of the Xiongnu.

3. Hun, a generic pan-Iranian
name?

When
reduced to its simplest expression, that Sogdian Xwn comes from Avesta Hyaona,
Bailey’s idea is appealing. It has recently been taken up and developed by S.
Parlato, whose work is currently the only comprehensive attempt that could
account for the use of the term Xwn
by the Sogdians regarding Xiongnu.9Parlato regards Hyaona as an
adjective rather than a proper noun, designating a front of resistance outside
of Iran against the attempts of centralization, and not a specific population. The
word had a literary and epic character, and was spread in the steppe by bards
of the Parthian Empire. It would have experienced an extraordinary success in
the Scytho-Sarmatian world, and would have served as a generic name there to
designate the hostile and demonic nomads.

This
thesis is essentially of substituting in, by employing a simple word, a
hypothetical expansion of a single tribal group through the Eurasian steppe and
the Central Asia, for the nomadic Scytho-Sarmatian tribes traveled earlier but
on the same space. It was not the Huns that would have moved; it would be a
generic name that crossed the steppe space unified by the Iranian-speaking
culture.

This
thesis has several strengths: Besides Xwn
as utilized by Nanaivandak, it also gives an account of the Hyōn of Sasanian sources, perhaps of the
Indian Hūõa, and especially of Xοῦνοι
mentioned by Ptolemy near the Don two centuries before any mention of the Huns.
Nonetheless, I consider it false.

Philologically,
there is hardly anything to say. Not having presented his ideas well, Bailey merely
raised, never argued, a possibility of a link between Hyaona and Xwn. In fact,
apart from Xwn, there is no known
Sogdian word derived from one of the few words in Avestan with initial hy- that can serve as a point of
comparison.10
The initial Avestan h disappears in
Sogdian, and hence the derived Sogdian word should not start with an X. On the other hand, the Avestan -hi- or -hu- within the words also disappears in Sogdian, even though there
are exceptions. And for lack of parallel case for the hy- initial, one cannot be certain of the normal derivation of Hyaona, and hence refute Bailey on this
basis. Although it is quite unlikely, one cannot totally exclude philologically
that Xwn is derived from Hyaona.

In
terms of Sogdian religious history, there is equally little to hope: the known
Zoroastrian fragments in Sogdian amount to a few lines, even though we now
possess the painting of a big sacred codex, probably the Avesta, carried in
procession in the streets of Pendjikent.11
It is impossible to know the role that the figure of the Avestan Hyaona might have played in the Sogdian
religion.

The
criticism must be historical. It has to deal with the following:

1) On
the importance of Hyaona: the Hyaona are certainly important enemies
in the Avesta, but, by no means, they
play the leading part. Why then would they choose their name as a pan-Iranian
word to designate hostile nomads? Is that role not already taken by the Tuirya? If it is conceivable that in a
state as deeply Zoroastrian as the Sasanid Iran one is able to revive the old
term of Hyaona in the form Hyōn to designate the Chionites in the
Pehlevi sources, this religious context is entirely missing elsewhere, in
particular in the steppe where there is no evidence of Zoroastrianism.

2) On
the mode of dissemination, if it is epic and has no direct religious value:
there is no evidence of any role of the Parthian minstrels in the steppe and to
suppose that they have any influence on a tribe established in the North of the
Balkans or having spread to Khotan to adopt a (hypothetical!) proper name
derived from Hyaona.

3)
Especially on the generic character: if the term Hun was generic, then how come
the descendants of the nomadic Scytho-Sarmatian peoples did not use it (Where
are the Ossetian Huns?), and more specifically, how is it that in the rare uses
of the term prior to the fifth century, the term is never precisely generic?
Finally, if really the word Hun was generic and of Iranian origin, then how is
it that the Huns of Europe apply it to themselves?

On
this last point, Sandra Parlato lightly claims: in response to the objection,
she characterizes Huns of Europe as the Iranian-speaking Scythians who remained
in the steppes of Southern Russia without attracting any attention before pushing
the Goths away. However, one thing is perfectly clear: the Huns are not
Iranian-speaking, as Maenchen-Helfen demonstrated a long time ago.12
Their personal names should then be explained in Iranian, which is absolutely
not the case. They, therefore, had no reason to use a generic Iranian term, and
even less to apply it to themselves. Moreover, it is unclear why these
allegedly Iranian-speaking people would describe themselves by a term supposed
to be so general, also not so accurate, and most importantly with strongly
negative connotation. This point alone is sufficient, in my opinion, to show
that the assumption of a generic Iranian name does not account for the
available data, and adds very little to the proposed mode of dissemination.

Let’s
go further on the supposedly generic character of the word by starting with a
paradox: not only Hun is generic, but
it is in Sogdian as well as in Khotanese, too. In other words, the recent
developments in research seem to reinforce the thesis of Bailey and Parlato, and
invalidate Daffinà’s reserve: Xwn is
attested in numerous Sogdian texts. In addition to the Second Ancient Letter, one can quote, in chronological order:

— An
unpublished fragment of a letter from the Tarim Basin like the Second Ancient Letter (and probably,
judging by the paleography, of similar date): Xwn is located in a context impossible to clarify.

— 16
entries in the onomastics of the Sogdian graffiti in the Upper Indus, undated
but assumed to be of the period between 3rd and 5th centuries (for grammatical
and paleographic reasons, and because of the absence of Turkish names): I will
treat them below.

— 7 in
the documents from the mount Mugh of the first quarter of the eighth century.

In
this last set, Xwn is clearly
generic: It is either used to designate the Turks, nomads of the North to the East
of the Sogdians, or is onomastic.13
Similarly, Bailey noted four Khotanese texts where Huna were mentioned: at least three of them use it in a generic
sense.14
The fourth is more ambiguous but seems to belong to the context of 7th century,
and it is, therefore, also generic.

However,
all unmistakably generic references to the term Hun are later than the 4th century. It is of no use to show the
generic nature of the word before this date, since it could be linked to the
expansion of the Huns in Central Asia and Europe. In other words, to show that Nanaivandak
baptized the Xiongnu by a generic name without any link to the actual name of
these nomads, one can use only references prior to the Migration Period (Völkerwanderung).

4. References to the Huns
before the Migration Period: the testimony of Zhu Fahu.

The references
to the term certainly dated before the Great Migration are as follows:

— In
Ptolemy, in the description of the European Sarmatians, a mention of a small
tribe of Χοῦνοι with Roxolani on the Don;

— In
two Indian Buddhist texts, translated into Chinese at the end of the third
century and at the beginning of the fourth century, translations where Håõais rendered by
Xiongnu;

— Second Ancient Letter.

The
Ptolemaic mention can hardly be of use to the argument: Completely unknown
otherwise, this tribe, if indeed they were neighbors to Roxalani, a subgroup of
Alans, could as well have taken as its name a generic term that is associated
with Xiongnu in Central Asia, from where Alans emigrated, thereby borrowing a
very prestigious name in an attempt to enhance themselves, as is often the case
in the steppe.15 No
data permits one to decide one way or another, and the possibility of chance
cannot be excluded. The methodological error resulted from this reference, a
source certainly familiar to Westerners, but in this case unusable.

The
Indian references and their translation into Chinese are more interesting. The Tathagataguhya-sutra and the Lalitavistara both mention Hūõa in their lists, the former in
one of the languages ​​in which the Tathagata
teach to the people of various countries and races, and the latter, the
biography of Buddha, in the list of entries that the child Buddha teaches to
his master. These texts predate the fourth century, and even though the former
was lost, there is a Tibetan version, which provides the Hu-na lesson in the
passage that interests us, while the latter is preserved. Both were translated
into Chinese by Zhu Fahu,a
monk native of Dunhuang, the first in 280 and the second in 308.16
In both cases, Zhu Fahu rendered Hūõa as Xiongnu.

These
references suggest several areas of research:

1.
What does the term Hūõa mean in Buddhist texts from
the beginning of our era?

2. Is
it a generic name in these texts?

3. Why
did Zhu Fahu translate it as Xiongnu?

Hūõa does not belong to the Indian
vocabulary and these two references are the oldest known. The term next reappears in the inscriptions to
designate the invaders from the northwest plaguing India in the fifth century
or in literary texts (Mahabharata).

The
text of Lalitavistara, as such, is of
little use, as the list of entries borrows from fantasy. At most, we can note
that Hūõa were neighbors with the
Chinese. It is quite different for the case of Tathagataguhya-sutra. The original text is lost, but there is an agreement
that the Tibetan versions are extremely faithful to the original. Now, the
Tibetan version provides

The Chinese translation of Tathagataguhya-sutra, in turn, gives the following:

“The
race of Shi (Çâkya for Çaka), Anxi, Yuezhi, Daqin, Jianfu, Raodong, Qiuci,
Yutian, Shale, Shanshan, Wuqi and the early and later kingdoms (the Turfan
region), Xiongnu, Xianbei, Wu, Shu, Qin, the Mo, the Yi, the Di, the Taluoduo,
the ignorant, the savages, and also...”17

The
structure of the Indian list is absolutely clear: the beginning of the text
constitutes a panorama of the foreign peoples as the Indian editors could
conceive them. These people are in contrast to the imaginary peoples or those stemming
from a distant past and half-legends, which are rejected in the end. Hūõa had no reason to be placed at
the beginning of the list if they were not a people having a geographical or
ethnic reality of the same order as that of the Parthians, the Bactrian, the
Greeks, the Cambodian of the Hindu Kush, or of the Khasa of the Himalayas. This
term has a well-defined geographical and cultural meaning in the eyes of the Indians,
though in a large scale. They are, on the other hand, well-documented in the Sanskrit
literature, as well as in the saga of the religious codes or texts.

Yet,
the Hūõa are totally absent from the
earlier literature, and their presence in this list cannot be explained as part
of the divisions of the world specific to the Indian culture. They are, indeed,
a part in this text of big ethnic or geographical divisions, as they were named
at the time. This list is rather precisely datable: it corresponds to the context
of the 1st century before our era or the beginning of our era, and co-exist
with Parthians, Greeks and Sakas, before the conquest of India by Kushans. Among
the political powers of the time, besides the Chinese, are, thus, mentioned Hūõa. In other words, regardless of
the Chinese translation of Hūõa, this leads to Xiongnu, the
empire of shanyü, the only major
Asian empire whose mention makes sense chronologically and whose name can be
approximately closer to Hūõa, to be the most likely candidate
already: among the languages which the Tathàgata teach people is that of the
Xiongnu alongside the Chinese, Greeks, Parthians.

The
translation of Hūõa for Xiongnu is to reinforce
this finding naturally. This is not a Chinese-
fashion interpretation, vague and generic: all the names in the Indian text
making sense in a framework of the Chinese thought are rendered word-by-word in
translation or transcription, and possibly clarified by a political update
corresponding to the context in 280. Only the things purely related to the
Indian way of things are deleted (Khasa) and replaced with others. Now, just
like the Pahlava are indeed the Parthian Arsacid Empire (Anxi), the Tukhàra the Yuezhi, the Yavana the Greeks (Daqin, roughly
the East Roman Empire, in other words, the Hellenistic world), and China the
Qin, nothing allows one to doubt in this text that the Hūõa are precisely the Xiongnu. Zhu
Fahu does not consider Hūõa as a generic name: he had
every opportunity to make them appear further away, in the quasi-historical
part of a list, which he did not hesitate to revise in depth until it no longer
made any sense to him, with Mo, Yi, and Di, peoples of the far North in Chinese
antiquity, corresponding much better to the idea of a generic name for “barbarian
peoples,” and add them to the Indian text. He could also simply have
transcribed it, as in the name of Dardes, or even eliminated it and replaced it
with others, as in the case of Khasa. He does none of this, but, as in Lalitavistara, returns Hūõa for Xiongnu.

He
even goes beyond that: he updates the term in a manner that fully confirms the
precise political sense of Hūõa in the original text. On
closer inspection, there are, in fact, two Chinese names that correspond to the
Hūõa in the Tathagataguhya-sutrà: Xiongnu and Xianbei. However, in 280, Xianbei
occupy exactly the place which Xiongnu occupied at the time of the drafting of
the original text.18
These are the main nomadic enemies in steppes North of China, with the Xiongnu
grouped further South in Shansi. In other words, with Zhu Fahu adding Xianbei
to Xiongnu, the normal translation of Hūõa (as evidenced, let us recall,
in Lalitavistara by the same
translator) annotates the term of Hūõa politically: Xianbei
structurally plays the political role which was that of Xiongnu before. He
proceeds elsewhere with the following term similarly: Cãna is given as “Wu, Shu, Qin territory.” Wu and Shu
are both the names of kingdoms in South China (lower Yangzi and Sichuan) in the
3rd-century China, the last of which, Wu, falls exactly in 280, while Qin
returns to Cãna at the same time, but, no
doubt, here also means northern China. In other words, the generic Hūõahas nothing to
do specifically with northern China.

All in
all, the use of the term Hūõa in these texts has a political
sense, that of Xiongnu and goes back up to the period when they were the main
nomadic adversaries of China and principalities of Central Asia. The Indian
editors quite logically included them in their lists and Zhu Fahu normally
rendered the term as Xiongnu.

Until
now, we were not interested in Zhu Fahu much: yet, he was very well known,
since he was Dharmarakṣa, the principal introducer of
Buddhism in China in the third century.19
In spite of the name of Zhu, which he took from his master, Zhu Fahu was from a
Bactrian family settled in Dunhuang for several generations, a true
representative of this milieu of large merchants with which Buddhism was
established in China. He was Sinicized but remained deeply tied to the Central
Asia where he traveled on several occasions, and which he knew “all” its languages.
He maintained, in particular, his links with Gansu, and, after his installation
in central China, returned regularly to Dunhuang. In other words, Nanaivandak
and Zhu Fahu did not belong to radically different circles, although a
generation separated them and even though Zhu Fahu was far better integrated
into the Chinese environment. Both were Iranian-speaking émigrés, and both
could, according to the hypothesis of Bailey and Parlato, understand Xwn and Hūõa in a generic sense: however,
that was not the case. Zhu Fahu used it with precision and his wisdom fully
supported the most immediate interpretation of the testimonium sogdicum. For both, the Huns were indeed the Xiongnu.

The
reasoning could end here: the only alternative hypothesis proposed to account
for the use of Xwn by Nanaivandak
about the Xiongnu in northern China does not stand up to scrutiny. It gives an account neither of the name of
Huns of Europe nor of the Hūõa term of the Indian texts, and
is not based on any mode of diffusion identified. The Indian authors and Zhu
Fahu renders Xiongnu as Huns and vice versa in contexts that exclude it as a
generic name. Nanaivandak is right to name Xwn
the Xiongnu. The Huns arriving in Europe from 370 very well used the name of
the Xiongnu, which is not, contrary to what Maenchen-Helfen wrote, devoid of any
meaning. In the current state of the data, the burden of proof rests entirely
on those who want to separate radically the Huns of Europe from Xiongnu.

To
proceed further, it is necessary to be interested in the Central Asia. These
Huns who appeared on the Volga in 370 with an old imperial name that originated
from the Far East inevitably came from the East: this was also indicated by all
the Graeco-Latin sources, and Maenchen-Helfen was very misguided to minimize
this fact.20 Proponents
of an absolute distinction between the Huns and the Xiongnu are, moreover,
careful not to explain how it was possible that the Huns, supposedly Pontic,
were in Central Asia. However, the knowledge on the history of Central Asia
have been profoundly reshaped since the time of Maenchen-Helfen and Bailey. Much
of the textual arguments or numismatics employed half-a-century ago for the
history of Huns in this area cannot be accepted anymore today. In addition, our
archaeological knowledge is infinitely better. I would, therefore, like to
present this new information and propose some hypotheses.

II. New data on the Huns in
Central Asia (4th and 5th centuries)

1. Numismatic data

First
of all, the numismatics. The reading oiono
on Ephthalites currency had confirmed the Byzantine texts speaking about the
Huns in Central Asia and was one of the most frequently quoted in debates on
Iranian Huns: it is now completely abandoned.21

The
reading αλχοννο on the coins from the late fourth century Kapisa and Gandhara,
struck with re-used corners of Shapur II, is now generally corrected as αλχαννο
by establishing the link with the Indian legend rajalakhana (i.e., rajah
alakhana), found on one of the issues,22
which would not make it possible any more to establish the link with Alxon and
Valxon of the Armenian Geography.23

Another
reading now disputed is that of βαγο κιδαρο on the dinars of the treasure of
Tepe Maranjan close to Kabul and buried under Shapur III (383–388): these
currencies clearly carry only κι followed by a highly variable number of
undifferentiated o. They could not provide the basis for a timeline whereas all
the other sources agree to place the Kidarite Huns (Oὄννων τῶν Κιδαριτῶν) in the period 420–440, and not in
the 4th century.24 Still
on the subject of Kidarites, one reads from now on kyδr on certain currencies from Samarkand reflecting an expansion
of their empire in Sogdiana.25

This
triple change has an important consequence: without oiono, and reading αλχαννο, we no longer know how the
invaders ravaging Central Asia called themselves. There are no more Huns on
currencies. Moreover, the text of Ammianus on Chionites and that of Faustus of
Byzantium in the 370s become our only sources on the events of the fourth
century.

2. Archaelogical data

Two sets
of archaeological data emerged to renew the question profoundly.
Maenchen-Helfen had had time to become acquainted partially with the first, but
the second, closely related to the Soviet work in Central Asia and depending on
the question of the date of Kanishka, has been considered relatively recently.

In his
book published posthumously in 1973, Maenchen-Helfen recognized, after
having denied it a long time, that the Hunnic cauldrons had their origins in
Xiongnu cauldrons. Furthermore, the sites of these objects, buried close to
springs or rivers, were similar in Inner Asia and Hungary, reflecting not only
material but also ritual and cultural continuity.26
In this posthumous and unfinished work, he did not draw any conclusion. The knowledge
on these cauldrons has since progressed. It emerged not only that the Hunnic
cauldrons of Pannonia arose from the Xiongnu cauldrons, but that one could
follow a typological evolution of the simple shapes of Ordos to the European
complex forms. In addition, roads that must be necessarily considered as
migration routes due to the continuity of worship now appear clearly.27
One of them is extremely northern and traverses the southern Siberia from East
to West up to the gap of Yekaterinburg in the Urals. On its route, the bulk of
the finds of Xiongnu cauldrons are concentrated between the Mongolian steppe
and the Hungarian plain. Yet, by applying precisely the same typological rules,
I am not sure that a direct link is necessarily established between the Xiongnu
groups that appear on the Upper Kama at the mouth of the Ural and the Huns who
invaded the Western world. There are several models of Xiongnu cauldrons quite
clearly differentiated by the shape of their handles. Cauldrons found on the northern
route to the Upper Kama belong to a very specific model never found in Hungary.
On the other hand, cauldrons found along a second route, much farther south,
correspond exactly to the findings of the Hunnic world. They are far fewer, but
from Urumqi and Altai to Central Asia, to the Volga River and finally to the
Hungary they trace what seems to be the story of a migration, which by its journey
would give an account of the whole of the available data.

Other
data set concerns sedentary Central Asia. The Soviet work was extremely
important both in Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan, as in Afghanistan. The entire
chronology of Central Asian sites is highly dependent on the monetary series
inaugurated by the Kushan emperors, continued by Kushano-Sassanians and their
barbaric followers. However, the chronology of the Kushan Empire remained
disputed for a long time, and the Soviet school28
was characterized by an extreme position, dating the first year of Kanishka to
371, while the emerging consensus is now 127–8. Once the chronology of the
sites was reconsidered, the picture becomes rather clear and sets the North and
South of Amu Darya, i.e., Sogdiana and Bactria. In Sogdiana and Bactria, the
4th century is marked by a profound change in the population,29
a regression of the sites, layers of fire and the abandonment of certain
irrigation networks. Further North along the Syr Darya, the irrigated
agriculture is also permanently reached, and it seems, from the ceramics, that
a part of the population took refuge in Sogdiana. It is, in particular, the
case of the Džety-Asar culture, in the delta of Syr Darya, that was largely
decimated at the end of the 3rd century or in the 4th century (multiple
destroyed sites, levels of fires). A part of the population arrived in the Caucasus
while another moved southward to Fergana.30
The inhabitants of the Kaunchi culture (along the middle course of Syr Darya)
took refuge in Sogdiana.31
Finally, in Khwarezm, the 4th century clearly marks a break. However, in the
5th century, the situation is different: while Bactria continues to bear the
scars of the fighting, the Sogdiana enters a phase of very fast rebuilding, undoubtedly
partly thanks to the refugee populations of Syr Darya and Bactria, as well as
an agricultural urban viewpoint. Political stability seems assured in the long
term, because canals are re-grooved, and especially a planned urban development
is implemented across the Valley of the Zerafshan.32
The 5th century sets the stage for the long economic dominance of Sogdiana over
Central Asia in early Middle Ages.33
Now, Weishu 102.2270 provides the
ethnic identity of the dynasty that, for at least three generations in the
fifth century, rules Sogdiana and presides over this development: they are
Xiongnu.

3. Textual data

From a
textual point of view, the appearance of numerous Bactrian documents
essentially clarified the onomastics. Thus, the name of Grumbates, the king of
the Chionites, ally of Shapur II who took part in the siege of Amida
(Diyarbakir) in 359,34
is now affirmed to be of a prince, shortly before 470, of the kingdom of Rob
(North of the Hindu-Kush) in the form Gorambad γοραμβαδο.35
The date of this document, subsequent to the statement of Ammianus Marcellinus,
does not make it possible to decide if this name is authentically Bactrian, in
which case Chionites would certainly be also, or if it were simply integrated
into the local noble onomastic stock. The documents and the Bactrian seals also
give the local form of the name of the Ephthalites, ηβοδαλο, and the personal
names of their kings Khingila εþκιγγιλο and Toramāõa
τωρομανο.36 The
Bactrian documents also lead to give up certain identifications: thus, the Himalayan
polyandry used by Enoki to assign a mountain and Pamir origin to Ephthalites is
now attested in Bactria a long time before their arrival: the Chinese records,
which mention it, confuse, under the name of Ephthalites, the wandering elites
and the local populations which they dominate. Many texts have not yet been
published, and we can reasonably expect that they will provide information
about peoples present in Bactria in the fourth century as they already do for
later periods.

On the
Sogdian side, the appearance, reported above, of the name Xwn within Sogdian onomastics in the caravaneers’ graffitiof the Upper Indus is
interesting: even if they do not have the same political significance as the
now-abandoned readings of the currencies, they ensure, nevertheless, the
presence of Huns in contact with the Sogdians sometime between the 3rd and 5th
centuries. The name is mentioned 16 times, and is in the third position by the
number in the onomastic corpus of these graffiti: this remarkable integration
to the stock of the Sogdian names reflects a period of merger of populations,
not of hostile relations.37
Yet, it is necessary to specify the date of these inscriptions. Now, a
detail makes it possible to think that these graffiti mentioning of Xwn are among the last engraved. Indeed,
contrary to the other names, Xwn is
completely absent from patronyms. There are 16 Xwn son of X, and no X son of Xwn.
These Xwn have fathers with perfectly
Sogdian names. The Xwn name is only
in this context, which leaves little to chance.38
On the other hand, a number of reasons suggests that the last graffiti were
registered in the 5th century:39
Those mentioning Xwn would then be a
part of them, and it is in the 5th century that we must place the fusion of the
populations. Their appearance thus confirms independently the Chinese and
Byzantine texts on the presence of Huns in Sogdiana: the Sogdian dynamism of the
5th century of our era under a Kidarite dynasty, qualified as Xiongnu by the
Chinese sources and as Hunnic by the Byzantine sources, forms indeed an ideal
context for the Xwn name to appear in
the Sogdian onomastics. In my opinion, these Sogdian Xwn were born under the Sogdian Kidarite dynasty, and engraved
their names on the rocks of the Upper Indus before 460 and the sudden Ephthalite
expansion in Bactria—a region that separates Sogdiana from these passes—blocked
the road.

Other
texts—Chinese, Armenian, Syriac, Byzantine and Indian—have long been known.
Hardly any attention has been paid, however, to the various reconstructions
suggested in the fact that the Chinese sources mention, at the beginning of the
5th century, the “remnants of the descendants of the Xiongnu,” far to the
Northwest of the Ruanruan, i.e., around the Altai (Weishu 103.2290). There is no reason to dispute the quality of the
information: Weishu is very parsimonious
in its use of the term Xiongnu,40
and these Xiongnu are the only ones among a list of the neighbors of the
Ruanruan. However, this information is very important: by itself, it knocks
down one of the main arguments used against the hypothesis of a migration of
the Huns from the former Xiongnu territory, the absence of any mention of the
Xiongnu to the North past the 2nd century. They actually survived far North,
completely beyond the field of view of the Chinese sources. That they did not
form an empire and that they were reduced to only being the heirs of the former
Xiongnu matter little: the tribal political identity was preserved.

Another
indication, in Weishu 102.2278–9,
although known, has not received all the attention it deserves: Ephthalites are
said to have migrated from Altai to the Central Asia around 360–370:

“Country
of the Yeda, of the race of the Great Yuezhi, they are also said to be another
branch of the Gaoju. They originally come from a region to the North of Sai.
Having left the Altai southward, they
settled West of Khotan. Their capital is more than 200 li South of the Oxus, and 1100 li
to Chang’an.”

What
adds the Tongdian, based on the original text of the Weishu, which it often preserves, is that the departure from the
Altai took place 80 to 90 years before the reign of Wen Cheng Di of the Later
Wei (452–466).41

4. A proposal for a
reconstruction

In
light of the above data, it is time to propose a reconstruction with the usual
precautions: it is a matter of giving an account, in the simplest manner, of
the greatest possible number of data, leading to the only likely result.

In my
opinion, a group of tribes, gathered under the political identity of Huns, left
the foothills of Altai in several waves between 350 and 360, some preyed on the
Syr Darya, the others on the Volga.

Several
facts indicate that the invaders of Europe as well as Central Asia relate
ultimately to the Altai: it is the Altai that has the largest concentration of
advanced Hunnic cauldrons in the East, and the only direct prototype of the
Hunnic cauldrons of Hungary; it is from there that the Ephthalites have
undoubtedly departed; this is the area that the Chinese sources still located
the “remnants of the descendants of the Xiongnu” at the beginning of the 5th
century. Finally, the devastation in Central Asia is from the North and East:
the populations of Syr Darya took refuge in the direction of the South or of
the Caucasus.42

The
timeline is equally consistent: the diffusion of the ceramics of Syr Darya in
Sogdiana shows that the devastation in Central Asia form an integrated whole,
and not a succession of isolated episodes; from 350 on, Sassanians face on
their northeastern border non-Iranian adversaries (the practice of cremation) whom
they name Chionites; Eighty to ninety years prior to 452, or around 360–370,
tribes, including the Ephthalites, leave the Altai in the direction of the
South and of Central Asia; in 370 at the latest, Hunnic tribes appear between
the Volga and the Don.43

Finally,
the Hunnic identity of these tribes is in little doubt; given the name they
bear, in Europe as well as in the texts in Central Asia, the possibility of a
generic name is ruled out: still, it is necessary to agree on the meaning of
this identity. The Chinese source makes it possible, on the one hand, to affirm
that, near the Altai, nomadic groups have continued to proclaim themselves the
political heirs of the Northern Xiongnu far beyond the field of view of the
Chinese sources between the 2nd and 4th centuries. The concentration of Xiongnu
cauldrons in the area and the continuity of their use in rituals show, in
addition, that this heritage is also partly religious. These Altaic nomads
could come down to tiny scattered Xiongnu bands, or in contrast form large
groups; nevertheless, it is this political and cultural Xiongnu identity that
helped unite the tribes. In the Steppe, the language and blood are irrelevant.

1 Maenchen-Helfen,
1945, using Shiratori, 1928, p. 98 and following. Also on the same subject, see
Enoki, 1955, p. 45 and following. Others before him had disproved a second
argument, which made a minor event in the history of Xiongnu—the installation
of one of their rulers in the first century b.c. north of today’s Tashkent—the source of the
Xiongnu's westward migration; so the episode was short-lived: Daffinà, 1969.

7 One
can possibly consider an intermediary, such as Yuezhi or Wusun, which does not
affect its independence from the Chinese transcription.

8 Sinor
sees in only Chionites, adversaries of Sassanids at the 4th century, the
descendants of Hyaona: Ammianus Marcellinus who knows Chionites and Huns never
establish the link between the two (Sinor, 1990, p. 179).

20
Maenchen-Helfen, 1973, pp. 444–7: the reasoning on Jordanes is particularly
strange. Jordanes located the Huns far to the East, alongside the Seres, and
Maenchen-Helfen hypothesizes that Jordanes borrowed this location, like many
other data, from Cassiodorus, who himself would have taken it from the
Periegesis of Dionysius. None of this is proven. But later, Maenchen-Helfen
stresses that no manuscript of the Periegesis gives the name of the Huns and
that contemporary editions depend on a correction by Müller, the editor. But if
the name of the Huns was not there, how could Jordanes or Cassiodorus borrow
it? Finally, the names of Seres and “Huns” are, by no means, close in Denys’s
text, and Maenchen-Helfen supposes that Cassiodorus drastically reduced the
list of the Eastern peoples of this text, with a result, therefore, of making
Huns the neighbors of Seres entirely at random. But why Cassiodorus would have
proceeded thus? In other words, faced with texts directly contrary to his
theories, Maenchen-Helfen produces ad hoc
even contradictory assumptions. Jordanes was not at a loss to talk about the
Huns, and his testimony is corroborated by other, certainly more vague, texts
including that of Ammianus Marcellinus (XXXI, 3, 1) who places them far to the
Northeast.

23 Translated
by Hewsen, 1992, p. 75. For my part, I am less certain of the validity of this
correction: If a large number of emissions carry -a-, the fact remains that some of them, among the earliest, carry -o-. We could be witnessing a phonetic or
graphic evolution. It would be highly surprising that the identity between the
name of the Alxon located by the Armenian geographer on the Syr Darya and that
of the new dynasty αλχοννο or αλχαννο in Gandhara is of pure chance, while it
is known that a certain number of nomadic peoples passed the mountains to the South during this period.

28
Still, it would be necessary to distinguish between the school of Leningrad,
dating Kanishka to 371 following the works of Zeymal’, and the school of
Tashkent, much more cautious, and in favor of a date very close to the date now
accepted.

29 Including
nomads practicing cremation, and hence the cemetery at Bishkent (Sedov, 1987).

37 Other
sets of documents that allow to study Sogdian onomastics, documents of the Mugh
Mountain from the 8th century, and Chinese documents from Turfan (7th–8th
centuries) hardly mention this name.

38 There
are, thus, to cite a few examples, 32 mentions of the name Nnyβntk including 10
in the position of a surname; similarly, there are 26 Pys’k including 10
patronymics, 12 cytβntk including 3 patronymics, 9 wxwšwβntk including 5 patronymics, 8 δwr’k
including 3 patronymics, 8 m’ymrγc including 5 patronymics, 6 wxwšwγβ”r
including 3 patronymics, 4 ‘βy’mnβntk including 3 patronymics... on the whole,
all the names represented in more than 5 inscriptions (but also most of those
that are present more than 3 times) are attested in the patronymic position,
and only Xwn makes an exception.

39 The
absence of Turkish first names leads to excluding the sixth century, while the
presence of the given name and the surname m’ymrγc seems to exclude the 4th
century, as the city of Maymurgh seems to flourish in the 5th century.

40 One
counts in the text about forty occurrences of the term, mostly associated with
the Southern Xiongnu or rhetorical comparisons with the Han period. References
to the contemporary Xiongnu other than that in the South are extremely rare;
there are only a total of three in Chapters 102 and 103 that are devoted to the
countries of the West and North, i.e., geographically the entire former Xiongnu
Empire. One is that cited above (103.2290), the second is in the famous passage
on the conquest of Sogdiana by the Xiongnu (102.2270), and the third describes
the fights with Ephthalites, the White Huns of the Byzantines. Procopius
emphasizes very clearly the Hunnic identity of the Ephthalites: “At a later
time, the Persian King Perozes became involved in a war concerning boundaries with
the nation of the Ephthalite Huns, who are called White Huns, gathered an
imposing army, and marched against them. The Ephthalites are of the stock of
the Huns in fact as well as in name (Έφδαλἴται δὲ Οὐννικὸν ὲν ἔθνοζ ἐισί τε καὶ
ὀνο άζονται); however, they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us.”
Procopius, History of the Wars, I,
3, 1–8 translated by Dewing vol. I p. 13–5.

42 Other
reconstructions, based on the idea of a migration but with different starting
points, face insurmountable difficulties. The Soviet school has long argued
that the Huns were indeed the descendants of Xiongnu, but with Xiongnu having
migrated to the southern Urals for a long time, where they merged with Ugric
populations before heading down to the South in the fourth century (references
in Maenchen-Helfen, 1973, p. 447 n. 21; see also: L. N. Gumilev, Xunnu, Moscow, 1960, chap. 15). This
reconstruction avoids the pitfalls of the generic name and could even explain
the Hunnic presence in Central Asia: one can possibly imagine a conquest of the
Central Asia by Hunnic groups from the Northwest. But in this context, it is
very difficult to understand why cauldrons of Hungary are not precisely of the
type of the Urals but go back up to samples found in the Altai or Urumqi. To
explain the presence of the lower Syr Darya ceramics on the Caucasus, count
down from the supposed invasion, mainly to account for the Chinese text making
the departure of the Ephthalites from the Altai to 360. To place the starting
point halfway, in the Kazakh steppe, on the Syr Darya or the Semirechye does
not solve anything: The Wei lue, like
the archaeology, forbids one to see in these areas any Xiongnu presence in the
3rd century (see the translation in Chavannes, 1905). Note in particular that
the Xiongnu miniature pots found in the Dzety-Asar excavations predate our era:
see Levina, 1996, p. 188.

43 Let
us recall that the distance hardly matters: even traveling only 6 months per
year, at the rate of 2 km to the West per day, it takes only 5 years to cover
the distance between the Altai and the Volga.